Layla

NOTE: Audio description version of this video is available for download.

My name is Layla, I’m a woman with disability from Jordan.

Free, independent and happy.

It’s difficult to be a child with disability. My parents started to search for a public school but it was difficult to find. It wasn’t accessible, even the teachers were a little bit mean, nobody wanted to play with me. Even if I cried nobody would come and ask “what’s wrong with you?” they just left me all day long. I was crying and nobody would even care.

Employment, one of the ugliest things…an ugly experience let’s say, I was really excited that I would work, that I would have my own money but I faced this problem that every time I went to an interview, this weird look… they wouldn’t ask but… “Why are you here? What are you doing here?”

One of the stories, I just understood from the look from the door. I just entered, he did like this…and I did like this…and I said “Thank you” and turned back and went home, yeah.

I tried to try everything, just to find myself and finally I found myself in the humanitarian field. Today I work for an organisation for the rights of people with disability. I basically work on training and empowering woman and girls with disability about their rights.

I didn’t imagine that women with disability in my society suffered this much, it was awful to find out that she can be poor, she can be disabled, and she can be uneducated so it’s horrible.

As a woman with disability at this age…I love my age but society made me hate this age because it’s the marriage age in this society.

Most of the girls with disability agree to anything. They can take somebody older, somebody as a second wife maybe with a bunch of children, uneducated maybe and she just gets stuck there.

So this is one of things in which I love. To change peoples lives even a little bit. It is good.

I have the right to choose my future and to have the choices of my future.

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